


the chill in your bones

by Crewe



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Episode Related, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, angst (sort of? idk)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 14:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9275114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crewe/pseuds/Crewe
Summary: (Major spoilers for ep 80)Scanlan dies in the fight against Raishan.Pike brings him back not long after.What happens to him in the meantime?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know that episode was SUPER FUCKING STRESSFUL but hey have some of my trademark Scanlan Angst

Scanlan doesn’t feel the final blow.

He remembers the cavern, heat so thick you could almost cut through it, the smell of soot and death, ears ringing with the opposing roars of two dragons, heart racing fast enough it seems liable to beat out its way out of his chest, not being able to move as his eyes water and skin burns from poison gas, his vision almost fully obscured by a wall of white and then the honeycomb ceiling of Thordak’s lair graying out as out of the corners of his eyes other figures slump to the ground.

And then he opens his eyes, and he sees nothing, hears nothing, feels nothing but cold piercing through him and freezing his very bones. He stands and looks down and no longer sees the cavern floor but a void, stretching all around him to infinity.

Then he turns, and he sees himself.

Far from the glorious picture he likes to paint of himself in his mind’s eye, Scanlan sees himself sprawled on the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, a look of pain and shock and fear cut into his face with his eyes squeezed shut. His skin is tinged blue with cold and covered in delicate patterns of frost.

He shivers.

Scanlan crouches down and considers himself. A joke of some kind passes through his head about being frozen... ice... ice is hard... some innuendo. It pops up reflexively and is gone before it’s even fully formed. He doesn’t look nearly as manly and heroic as he’d like to be, unfortunately. He would’ve much preferred at the least to be covered in the blood of his enemies, or artfully mauled in a way that highlighted his best features. He hopes that if his friends survive, they at least arrange his body into something more flattering before letting anyone else see him.

Before Kaylie sees him.

Scanlan closes his eyes and goes to sigh before he realizes he hasn’t been breathing. And suddenly, without even the familiar sound of his breath and heartbeat to ground him, the surrounding silence after the roar of battle feels oppressive, and without thinking about it he tenses his shoulders under its crushing weight.

He opens his eyes again. He can’t keep from looking at the body; he can’t make himself look away, not when that means staring into the void with it at the corner of his vision like a ghost.

Heh. Ghost. Another joke passes through his mind, about how he thinks that body there is a ghost when  _ he’s _ a ghost now and isn’t that ironic but he goes to open his mouth to share it and realizes there’s no one to hear it. He abruptly shuts his mouth, biting off the joke before it even passes his lips; somehow, he can’t bring himself to fill this emptiness with sound.

God--can he even speak without breath?  He can’t bear to try, for fear of finding it gone--after all, who is he, even, without his voice?

He doesn’t want to think about it.

He straightens up, brushing his hands off on his pants, feeling soiled despite not even touching the body. Looking at himself (or whatever form this is that he is currently inhabiting) with trepidation, he finds that despite the rather awful appearance of his corpse, his clothes are in perfect condition: not a tear or battle-stain to be seen.

Well, at least his--ghost? Soul? manifestation of his consciousness?--looks presentable.

He’s still so goddamn cold.

As he unnecessarily adjusts his collar and sleeves, he wonders uneasily how things are going against Raishan. The last he saw, it was “to hell in a handbasket”; he has only the vaguest memories of the blast that put him under ( _ some kind of… snow or frost attack? _ ), but he thinks he saw at least one or two other bodies fall around him. He feels a pang of guilt when he thinks that he isn’t there to wake them up with a healing word, as he has so often lately now that Pike isn’t around much. Hopefully she can take care of them.

God,  _ Pike _ . He hopes Pike is okay. He hopes she can get the rest of them out of that hell-hole alive.

He doesn’t bother to include himself in the thought. He already asked her not to bring him back. She already told him she’d follow his wishes.

He doesn’t know how he feels about that now.

He supposes it doesn’t matter.

He does hope this void is some kind of in-between space and not the be-all end-all of the afterlife. What a goddamn rip-off. Scanlan embraced the possibility that he’d get a bad ending a long time ago, but at least give him some classic fire and brimstone, not this endless  _ nothingness _ that does the impossible and makes him feel  _ small _ . If he has to stay here for the rest of eternity he’s liable to lose his mind, and he’d rather maintain the ability to at least joke about his circumstances; it got him through life, he doesn’t see why it shouldn’t get him through what comes after.

Time passes.

It’s impossible to tell how much without even heartbeats to measure by; it could be seconds, years, whole eternities that he spends studying his corpse, before suddenly he feels something change.

He isn’t sure quite what it is at first, until he sees in front of him a shimmering golden line materialize connecting his chest to the chest of the body on the ground and he realizes what’s happening.

Evidently Pike decided not to follow his instructions, after all.

Scanlan studies the line, and it occurs to him that he could be done. He could easily break that fragile cord, sever the connection, and he knows she wouldn’t be able to rebuild it. He could end it all, move on to whatever comes next, leave that frozen body and this endless void and all the pain and fear and suffering that awaits him back in the cavern.

He doesn’t know how long he considers it for before, suddenly, he hears a voice behind him, shushing him as if they could hear his thoughts.

If he his heart was still beating it would have leaped, because he knows that voice. He remembers that voice and its exact cadence and intonation more vividly than he remembers the roar of Raishan mere moments ( _ was it moments? _ ) ago because he’s played this conversation back in his head every night before he’s slept ( _ and often during his waking hours, too _ ) since he left Kymal.

He turns and sees Kaylie exactly as she was that day, tears at the corner of her eyes but staring at him with deathly serious intent, one finger pointed at him like she could pin her words to his heart ( _ she did, she did _ ).

“ _ Don’t you die _ .”

Scanlan feels the impression of her in his arms ( _ holding her as she sobs and her sword clatters to the ground, his breath catching as she grabs him and holds on like he never dreamed she would, he dreams now, tentatively, of holding her again when the world is safe _ ) like he would feel an old wound and he stares at her, this angry, passionate young woman who is the most beautiful and precious thing he has ever seen, and takes a step forward.

“ _ You stay alive _ .”

Scanlan reaches up to cup her cheek and finds her insubstantial.

Of course; this is just a memory. He knows what he has to do if he ever wants to see his real daughter again, if he ever wants to give her that talk he owes her, if he ever wants to give her  _ everything _ he owes her.

He smiles and brushes his lips against where her forehead would be, as she did to him that day ( _ and he feels that spot burn, remembers how he felt it burn the whole way back to Westruun, she’s starting to forgive me, maybe we can really do this _ ).

Besides, it would be nice to feel warm again.

He closes his eyes.

When he opens them again, he hears the dragons roaring and feels the heat bearing down on him, takes a deep breath in and breathes smoke and smells sulfur and his vision is taken up by Pike leaning over him, one hand on his shoulder and the other on the side of his face, hair and face caked with soot and blood and tears tracing grimy tracks down her cheeks. He smiles at her, gently, happily, trying to tell her without words,  _ I forgive you. It’s okay _ .

Instead, he tells her, “Don’t cry. I’m just a little cold.”

**Author's Note:**

> where is kaylie shorthalt matt. tell me you coward.


End file.
